We’ve been teased about it for so long, but finally The Hollywood Reporter has confirmation that an Arrested Development movie is seriously happening. Series creator Mitch Hurwitz will write the screenplay and direct the film apparently with help from Ron Howard, who will also produce through Imagine Entertainment. Fox Searchlight will distribute. Here is SpoutBlog’s suggested plotlines for the film, originally published a year ago, in case Hurwitz is stumped for ideas.
Also moving forward is the DC Comics adaptation Captain Marvel, which is now at Warner Bros. with Get Smart’s Peter Segal still directing as part of a new first-look deal with the studio. Before we get to hear shouts of “Shazam!” on the big screen, though, Segal will be helming a faux biopic titled Liam McBain: International Tennis Star and Proper English Geezer.
Twilight supporting player Anna Kendrick reportedly beat out many young actresses, including Ellen Page, for the female lead role opposite George Clooney in Jason Reitman’s Up in the Air. Hopefully there are no hard feelings in case Reitman ever wants to reteam with Page for Juno 2.
John Malkovich, who made his feature directorial debut six years ago with The Dancer Upstairs, announced he’s making a documentary about the plight of migrant children titled Triple Crossing. Mexican actors Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna are producing.
Our friends at The Playlist are expressing skepticism over Jason Bateman’s latest claim that the Arrested Development movie is “in the works,” but at the very least, Bateman’s insistence on talking the thing up in spite of a total lack of hard evidence that the movie exists is a fascinating example of how not-quite major stars can use the press to their advantage.
When Bateman first mentioned the thing, on the Juno press tour, the press went nuts––probably primarily because 90% of Arrested Development’s devoted fan bas consists of bloggers and journalists. Juno had an unusually long press cycle for a studio film, beginning at Telluride and continuing straight through Oscar night, and for about a week, its fourth billed star was able to temporarily hijack the attention and steer it towards his dream project. He’s essentially doing the same thing with Hancock: he again has a supporting role, but any little crumbs he has to offer about an AD movie (and the couple of sentences dropped here are less than substantial) are far more interesting than anything he could say about the joys of working with Will Smith.
“If the personalities of The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters weren’t real, Christopher Guest would have invented them.” So begins a gushing review of Seth Gordon’s doc from FourFour. “It made me believe that video game scores matter, and I don’t think that anything matters, really.”
Kristin at E! Online says she has “exclusive” information that the Arrested Development movie is going forward. No word yet on whether or not they’re taking any of our plot suggestions.
I think the entire internet must be hungover, because those are pretty much the only blog posts I could find in two hours of combing through and refreshing my feed reader that weren’t about the Super Bowl, Super Bowl ads, or Heidi Montag. Sorry. I’m sure it’ll be better tomorrow.
Oh my. The wholewideinternet is now talking about David Cross’ blog post in defense of his decision to cash in on Alvin and the Chipmunks. Cross was apparently moved to write the post, at least in part, by “a snide comment” made by fellow comedian Patton Oswalt on his own blog. Oswalt, who acknowledges the irony that he’s somehow managed to maintain some modicum of credibility even after playing “the fat sidekick from King Of Queens” for something like three decades, had originally claimed that “[B]oth Brian Posehn and I were offered the part [in Alvin]. We both threw the script across the room in disgust. David Cross caught it.”
Now, in a letter ostensibly addressed to Cross, published by The A.V. Club, Oswalt says said snide comment was actually an inside joke which Cross just didn’t get. Oswalt says he ran into Cross after attending the premiere of Failure to Launch, in which Oswalt had “a tiny, three-line part in the movie, and I used it as a way to scam Paramount into flying me to Manhattan for a few days.” And then…
A number of stories from Juno press confabs fueled rumors last week that Jason Bateman is trying to jump-start a movie based on his much-missed FOX comedy Arrested Development. Keith Olbermann, who admits to being friends with at least three ex-AD cast members, passed along a statement from the actor and series creator Mitchell Hurwitz, confirming that the movie is “something [they're] very interested in doing, but only after the writers’ strike, and only if the powers that be approve.”
For those not in the know, AD starred Bateman as Michael Bluth, the one sort-of together member of a high-profile Southern California family, whose real estate tycoon patriarch (Jeffrey Tambor) has been thrown in jail whilst awaiting trial on charges of (among other things) building mansions for Sadaam Hussein. Michael Cera, Bateman’s so-hot-right-now Juno costar, played his son on the show; Will Arnet, Portia DiRossi and David Cross rounded out the cast.
I was a huge Arrested Development fan (I wrote this much-misread post about the show in spring 2005), but I was also fairly satisfied with the series’ conclusion. I sat down to try to imagine/divine possible plotlines for a movie, but because there was very little that I was dying to see resolved, I decided to call in some reinforcements. I sent out emails to some bloggy friends, I trolled Facebook looking for fans. Then, weirdness: for every AD fan who happily offered up an idea for The Bluth family’s big screen debut, another essentially refused to comment. It looks like there’s a decent contingent of AD fans who really don’t want to see the show they love ruined by a false, cinematic extension–and really, having seen the careless cash-in that is the Sex and the City trailer, can you blame them?
In any case, between my own fixations and those of three blogger friends, after the jump I manage to cobble together a list of five pretty promising potential plotlines for this not-yet-even-greenlit Arrested Development movie. These aren’t prognostications, just narrative directions that actual AD fans would like to see explored. Toss out your own thoughts in the comments.
We’ve had a bit of trouble getting this episode to go through the iTunes feed, so we hope this re-post will fix the problem. The original post, with episode description and embedded player, is here.
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